UN: staff came under fire in Sri Lanka ‘safe zone’

[ AP ]

Dozens of U.N. workers and their relatives spent a terrifying night huddling in hastily built bunkers as artillery fire pounded a civilian “safe zone” in Sri Lanka’s war-wracked north, according to an internal U.N. memo. The memo, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, said the artillery shells killed nine civilians in a nearby bunker and were apparently fired by government forces. The military denied the charge and President Mahinda Rajapaksa renewed the government’s pledge not to launch attacks in the refuge as it fought to crush the Tamil Tiger rebels and end the country’s 25-year-old civil war.